Editing Fatwa (section)

===Role of modern media===

Advances in communication technology and the rise of the internet have changed the reception and role of fatwas in modern society.{{sfn|Dallal|Hendrickson|2009}}{{sfn|Ghafour|2016}} In the pre-modern era, most fatwas issued in response to private queries were read only by the petitioner. Early in the 20th century, the reformist Islamic scholar [[Rashid Rida]] responded to thousands of queries from around the Muslim world on a variety of social and political topics in the regular ''fatwa'' section of his Cairo-based journal ''[[Al-Manar (magazine)|Al-Manar]]''.{{sfn|Messick|2017}}{{sfn|Messick|Kéchichian|2009}} In the late 20th century, when the Grand Mufti of Egypt [[Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy|Sayyid Tantawy]] issued a fatwa allowing interest banking, the ruling was vigorously debated in the Egyptian press by both religious scholars and lay intellectuals.{{sfn|Dallal|Hendrickson|2009}}

In the internet age, a large number of websites has appeared offering fatwas to readers around the world. For example, [[IslamOnline]] publishes an archive of "live fatwa" sessions, whose number approached a thousand by 2007, along with biographies of the muftis. Together with satellite television programs, radio shows and fatwa hotlines offering call-in fatwas, these sites have contributed to the rise of new forms of contemporary ''ifta''.{{sfn|Dallal|Hendrickson|2009}}{{sfn|Ghafour|2016}} Unlike the concise or technical pre-modern fatwas, fatwas delivered through modern mass media often seek to be more expansive and accessible to the wide public.{{sfn|Messick|2017}}

Modern media have also facilitated cooperative forms to ''ifta''. Networks of muftis are commonly engaged by fatwa websites, so that queries are distributed among the muftis in the network, who still act as individual jurisconsults. In other cases, Islamic jurists of different nationalities, schools of law, and sometimes even denominations (Sunni and Shia), coordinate to issue a joint fatwa, which is expected to command greater authority with the public than individual fatwas. The collective fatwa (sometimes called ''ijtihād jamāʿī'',  "collective legal interpretation") is a new historical development, and it is found in such settings as boards of Islamic financial institutions and international fatwa councils.{{sfn|Berger|2014}}